I walked to a homeless camp near an underpass of I-5. The camp was built on an artificial hill made of construction debris. It was a jumble of tents, and incredibly steep and slippery. Midway up the hill, there was a fire pit. When I arrived, the residents had learned only hours before that they were going to be evicted. Two weeks later, the camp was destroyed.

People gathered around the fire pit. Someone spilled rolling tobacco into the mud. The ground was spongy and wet. It was windy, as the hill was quite exposed. There were broken televisions, bikes, and other scavenged things.

There was a man sitting quietly, removed from the discussion. He was drawing with color pastels in a small pad. His drawings were beautiful. When I asked to look, he showed them to me, but he was tense. He seemed half appreciative that someone was asking to see his drawings, and half anxious, as if certain secrets were being revealed. Some pages had a lot of hand written notes, but I was not able to look at these. While showing others, he would either briefly explain the theme or inspiration, or he wouldn’t.

On his hands, he had a pattern drawn, though I couldn’t tell if it was a tattoo, or if it was marker.

I went around looking at the different tents, and met Celine coming back into the camp. She was 30 years old, and had been homeless since she was a little girl.

"Everybody's so fond of labels. Well, yeah. We're criminals. We're trespassing. We're criminals. Some people do drugs. Some people do all kinds of stuff. But research has been done that shows it's more of a symptom than a problem in itself. It's a symptom of stuff that's going on in their head and their lives that's untreated and undealt with. And people don't really get a chance to do that without getting shoved into a corner, where, you know, if you want the help then you're one of those people. Because you are homeless, or you're poor, or you're whatever. You're one of those people. so you're automatically shoved into that category. But who's the real criminal? I'm from California. My state is going dry and, look at Nestlé-- All the bottled water we get comes from California! It's really easy to look at people who don't have as much as you, see people in more of a survivalistic life. It does seem more animal. I think it makes people uncomfortable because it reminds them that they're animals, and that the only thing separating them from them, is two paychecks and four walls. That's the only difference. They might have better drugs in their medicine cabinet than they have across the street. They're certainly a lot better medicated.”